I wanna do the the Milo triathlon 2010 because I want my father to be proud of me

That's what abigail wrote on her Milo triathlon entry slip in response to a question on why she wanted to participate. This girl at 10 years of age looks like a 7 year old; is the third smallest in her standard and rarely does anything physical but was quite adamant about it sometime ago. I hadn't done anything to really encourage her but she must have seen me in the early morning coming back from cycling when she was preparing to go to school or me running in the late afternoons. She was always curious. " Dad,  are you racing to win? Why do you go out there in the early mornings and put yourself through all that when you are always amongst the last? Do you really enjoy all this torture??" To a 10 year old whose main interests are makeup and dressing up and counts for characters on the Disney channels sitcoms and movies as role models, I find the questions amusing and in the early days thought that I should answer some of these questions as candidly as possible. Its the "spirit of participation that matters". Its a healthy lifestyle and i want to keep myself fit as long as possible to see you get married and have kids and your children have kids. I am going to give your mum a run for the money to see who lives longer. Occasionally it is the more subtle lessons of life; like learning discipline, learning to deny yourself as you work towards a goal. pushing your limits.

All that talk must have sunk into that little mind. She tool the opportunity to do open water swimming at the Tribob aquatholon; cycled at the Clementi cannel and ran around the neighbourhood. She had a mild flu 2 days before the event and we thought she would probably use that to back out but she didn't. On race day she was first up and was sufficiently bright eyed and bushy tailed for me to think she will truly go though with this. She swam her heart out, and pedalled as furiously as she could muster and finally in the run she pushed herself to the limit. as i ran with her i could encourage her.  I saw her grit her teeth and sprint at the home stretch.

She was a little green about the gills from over-exertion but she gave it her all.

Yeah, the old man was immensely proud of her achievements that saturday morning. Well done Gail!